Bright Young Women(115)

I returned to the shore, wringing out my long hair, and the high school girls offered me a towel when they saw me drying off with Tina’s shift dress. I felt them staring at my body the way I used to stare at beautiful women when I was a little girl, wondering if I would ever grow up to look like that.

I thanked them and spread the towel on the grass, lying on my back, letting the sun decide what to do with me for once. I was twenty-five and had rarely spent time in a bathing suit. Bathing suits were for pools and beaches, and pools and beaches were for women who didn’t need makeup. And yet somehow I was one of those women now! I traced my fingers in the grass, imagining how Tina would look at my tawny thighs later.

A cold shadow fell over me. “Pardon me, miss?”

I opened my eyes, expecting to see someone much older. No one my age used the expression pardon me without rolling their eyes at themselves. But the guy seemed around my age, dressed in an all-white tennis outfit that set off his nice tan. His hair was neatly combed to the side, and his left arm was cradled close to his body in a sling. He wasn’t half bad-looking.

“Could I ask your help with something?” He smiled a little sheepishly.

I sat up on command.

“I’m supposed to be meeting some friends here to help me load my sailboat onto my car, but I can’t find them anywhere.” The man squinted into the swarm of people, one last attempt to pick them out. “I’d do it myself, but…” He smiled down at his bum arm.

Next to me, the chatter had died down. I could sense the high school girls leaning in, listening for their entertainment but also curious about how men and women met in the real world. Something like amused solidarity emanated from a housewife on my right, both of us old enough to recognize the line for what it was.

I patted my towel. “Why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about it a moment. Where’s the boat?”

The man crouched carefully, flinching as he rested his injured arm on his knee. “It’s right here in Issaquah at my parents’ house. Not far at all.”

“I know. I grew up in Issaquah.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Over by the glade. But I’m closer to the university now.”

“You’re by one of my favorite bars.”

“Dante’s,” we said at the same time.

“My friends just played the venue,” he said. “Last Saturday. The Lily Pads?”

I shrugged. Hadn’t heard of them.

“They’ve got a great sound. Folksy, but you can still dance to it. You should really go see them next time they’re in town. We could go together.”

I glanced at the housewife. She smiled knowingly as she smeared sunscreen over the face of one of her squirming children. She was wearing a modest one-piece that started at her clavicle and ended a few inches above her knees. I could imagine that she was thinking she had been my age not that long ago.

“Maybe,” I said, not wanting to hurt his feelings but not wanting to get his hopes up either.

“I could drop you at home after we wrestle this thing into the trunk,” he offered. “Or you’re welcome to come sailing with me and my friends once I find them.”

“Why can’t your parents help you?”

“My father just had surgery on his back. My mother”—he brought a finger to his lips and lowered his voice, like what he was about to say wasn’t nice—“she’s not a very fit woman.”

“I see,” I said in a clipped voice. “So you sought out the fittest-looking woman on the beach.”

“I suppose I sought out the cleverest,” he replied suavely. There was something aristocratic about the way he spoke, about his slight build and his starched white shorts. I wanted to tell the high school girls that men were not normally this well-mannered when they bothered you, that in fact this one struck me as so odd that I couldn’t picture him with a girlfriend, or even with the group of friends who were supposed to meet him here. I felt bad for him all of a sudden. I wondered if his friends had stood him up. He seemed like that guy in the group, the tagalong.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

His eyes crinkled as he told me. “What’s yours?”

“Ruth.”

“Ruth.” The man extended his good arm. He gave my hand one firm tug, held sustained eye contact.

I pointed. “How’d you do that to your arm?”

“Racquetball.”

I laughed at him. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know anyone who wore white shorts like that, who played tennis, sure, but racquetball? For a moment, I wondered if it was all an act. This was the kind of pretense I thought existed only on the East Coast.

He bowed his head, appropriately cowed. “I learned so that I could play with my boss. Guess I wasn’t very good.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer. Well, I’m studying to be. I’ve got two years to go. I’m a summer associate at a law firm downtown right now.”

“What law firm?”

“Baskins-Cole?”

“Oh yeah. I think I saw an ad for them in the paper before.”

“We’re mostly corporate law.” He shrugged as though this might explain, if I hadn’t heard of them.

I brushed the grass back and forth with the palm of my hand, staring out at the sun dimpling the skin on the lake. The housewife was now moderating an argument between two of her children over who got the last Popsicle stick.